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| The lip (red arrows) wrapping around the sink looks like styling, but it isn't. |
Great design is transparent.
– Joe & Joe (Sparano & Moreno)
Styling is concerned with surface treatment and appearance – the expressive qualities of a product. Design, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with problem solving.
– "Design of the 20th Century" by Charlotte & Peter Fiell
One day, I plugged up the sink on the right with a stopper and stepped away while I left the water running to fill up the basin. I quickly forgot about it until about 20 minutes later. As I hurried back to the kitchen, I could hear the water spilling over before I could see the sink. In my mind's eye, I envisioned how much of a mess of water I'd have to clean up on the floor. Guess what? Not a drop spilled onto the counter or ground. I was floored when I saw that every drop of water had overflowed into the sink basin on the left, thanks to the lip around the sink. For all these years, I simply thought that lip was styling; it turns out it's functional. It's a design element that solves a problem – the exact problem I created by leaving the water running until it overflowed.
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